Redikas

More or less right from his emergence to the European basketball scene as a youngster, Dovydas Redikas has been known as quite a character. As many Vilnius nightlife participants would attest, the combination of girls, parties and alcohol often found themselves higher on the priority list than basketball.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that once touted as top-class talent, Redikas was now trying to revive his career in BK Jekabpils, a mid-table club in Latvia. However, it is most certain that we will soon be talking about this short Latvian stage of the 22-year-old’s career in a past tense as well.

Juris Bobrovs, the director of the team, saw it was only reasonable to give the player a couple of days off. The club even bought an obituary in the newspaper and sent a representative, with a mourning wreath, to the funeral in Kuršėnai.

Only there was no funeral.

“We tried to understand him. We wanted to give him time to deal with it psychologically. We actually did even more than is usually expected in these situations,” Jekabpils’ coach Edmunds Valeiko told Lietuvos Rytas. “But then we found everything out.”

Obviously, after an incident of such levels of folly, fence-mending is out of the question. The player’s agent and the club are talking about the terms of release.